To find out ‘how accurately people can remember the details of a complex event.’

Abstract: This study is a replication of Loftus and Palmer (1974) original study on how a different verb in the question used to ask for the speed of the car affected the participants’ estimate on the speeds of the car crash. In this experiment, three videos were shown to them and they were asked a series of questions including how fast the car was when it smashed/contacted each other. The participants are teenage students from an international school in Hong Kong. It is hypothesized that the word ‘smash’ would cause a higher estimate in speed than the word ‘contacted’. Speed estimates for ‘smashed’ were in fact slower overall than ‘contacted’, a discussion on why the results were not replicated is included. The results from this experiment did not conform with the original study so they are inconclusive. (136)

Contents:
Introduction 1
Design 1
Participants 1
Procedure 2
Results and Conclusion 2
Discussion 3 References 4
Appendix 1 4
Appendix 2 6
Appendix 3 7
Appendix 4 8

Introduction: Loftus and Palmer (1974) believed that our memory depended on the reconstruction of an event in our mind when we try to remember. So they created an experiment where participants were asked to view videos of car crashes and recall the speed they think the cars were traveling at time of collision. The aim was to find out how accurately people can remember the details of a complex event.
They found that the more dramatic the word was used to ask the question, the higher the reported speed of the crash. This can be explained by cognitive schemas, which input ideas of how certain words are to be associated. There are memories with the ‘to-be-remembered’ label and affect eyewitness testimonies when these memories are activated with verbal stimuli.